Study of Living Things and the Scientific Study of Life

The process of change that transformed life on Earth is called evolution. A result of evolution would be an organism's adaptations to its environment such as adaptations to conserve water. The world is full of different organisms who came from a single celled ancestor. We study all of these living things and the scientific study of life and living things is called is called biology.

Everything is organized into different levels in a hierarchy. The first level is the biosphere which is basically the whole world. The next level is ecosystems which include living and nonliving things. Next is communities, which contains many different types of species. The next level is populations then there are organisms which are individual living things. In every organism there are usually organ and organ systems which then break down into the next level of tissues. Tissues in turn are broken down into cells which break down into organelles, atoms, and then to molecules which is the lowest level.

In the world there are so many different types of cycles and processes that occur and the goal of science is to understand natural phenomena. In science we also use different forms of technology and we use it to apply scientific knowledge for the same specific purpose. Another big thing that is an important factor in this world if energy and living organisms transform energy from one form to another. In an ecosystem, energy usually starts out as light and then ends in heat.

The basic unit of life is a cell which is also the basic unit of an organism's function and structure. There are two types of cells which are eukaryotic and prokaryotic. A prokaryotic cell doesn't have a nucleus but has a nucleoid which is where it contains its genetic material...

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...e like olive oil. Phospholipids make up cell membranes and has two fatty acids and a phosphate group attached to glycerol. Steroids are characterized by a carbon skeleton with four fused rings. Cholesterol is a very important steroid that is a component of animal membranes.

Proteins account for more than fifty percent of dry mass. It consist of one or more polypeptides, each folded and coiled into a specific 3-D structure. Proteins speed up chemical reactions because they are enzymes. A proteins consists of one or more polypeptides and a polypeptide is and unbranched polymer that is built from the same set of twenty amino acids. Of the twenty amino acids, glycine is the simplest one and can fit into tight corners. Amino acids are linked by peptide bonds. There are four types of protein structure which are primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary.